The Day Obama Decided

The day Obama decided enough was enoughand turned off his TV and slept well for the first time since 2007,and Nancy Pelosi decided enough was enoughon a weekend in Vermont, when she threwthe Times and the Post into the woodstove unread,and Congress decided enough was enoughstaring into the mirrors of their sleeping consciences:They began by ordering all the troops home.

They pulled trailers down the highwayspast the cornfieldsand wheeled hot tubs up to the doorsof arthritic old ladies,presented bottles full of bubble bathstamped “Courtesy of U.S. D.O.D.”

They rode ferris wheels with teenagers from Guantanamo,passed baklava, pupusas, and mangoes on sticksdown the streets to anyone who wanted them.

Then they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue.The doors of the White House were flung wide open.Anyone who wanted to could stream infor a handshake and a plastic flag.

The air was thick with confettifrom all the shredded fear laws.Open your mouth: You can stilltaste the jagged edges.“SB1070″ and “USA PATRI”melt away on your tongue.

Margit Berman is a writer, activist, psychologist, faculty at Dartmouth Medical School, and contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. Berman is published in If Poetry Magazine and has won awards at the Poetry-Free-For-All and Garrison Keillor’s Green Light at the End of the Dock Festival of Romantic Poetry. Berman attended Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2008 and 2010.